Just a day after his big win in Michigan, Mitt Romney ceded South Carolina to his rivals.

“This is a state I’d expect that Sen. [John] McCain has pretty well wrapped up,” Romney told reporters at the Sun City Hilton Head Retirement Center in Bluffton. “It would be an enormous surprise if he were unable to win here.”

Romney’s South Carolina strategy amounts to being politically half-pregnant. He doesn’t want to raise expectations in a state he likely can’t win, so he’s dashing off to Nevada midday Thursday to compete in the lightly contested caucuses there Saturday. But at the same time, he doesn’t want to offend his supporters in South Carolina.

Polls show Romney standing in solid third place in South Carolina, taking anywhere from 13 percent to 17 percent of the vote. But in Bluffton, Romney put himself in fourth place, noting that “even a strong fourth is better than what some of the other guys saw in Michigan last night.”

It’s called playing the expectations game, folks. If Romney wins Nevada and places a respectable third in the Palmetto State, he will indubitably claim a victory.